Name:

Heather Shoemaker

Title:

Founder & CEO - Language I/O

Heather Morgan Shoemaker is cool because after graduating with an undergraduate degree in linguistics from the University of Washington in Seattle and a Master’s Degree from the CU Boulder College of Engineering, she left a high-paying corporate job in Denver to found a tech startup in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She bootstrapped it initially, meaning she funded it with money saved from her corporate job. Eventually, she realized that she would need to raise money to grow the company faster so they could capture a larger portion of the target market, which is business-quality machine translation technology. To date, she has raised almost $23 Million in venture capital funding and has grown the company from just herself to about 55 people today. Wyoming is where they hire the largest portion of employees, though they have employees all over the world.  Her goal is to grow the company alongside the tech ecosystem in Wyoming so young people don’t have to leave the state as soon as they graduate because they can find exciting, high-paying jobs in this state.

And she can’t wait to talk about the opportunities for young graduates who want to stay in Wyoming. She would especially love to see more women in tech leadership and the state of Wyoming has been very supportive of this initiative. Recently, the Wyoming Venture Capital fund, part of the Wyoming Business Council, invested $3M in her company to help diversify the Wyoming economy and grow tech jobs in the state.

Visit Heather’s website here!

Name:

Sommer Grogan

Title:

Partner & Creative Director - The BARK Firm

Sommer Grogan is a Casper, Wyoming native and is super excited to share her story at LIFT 2023!

Sommer’s career is pretty awesome, as she is a founding partner of The BARK Firm (an edgy, fully-remote marketing firm) right here in Casper that serves clients locally, regionally, nationally…and even globally. BARK is one of the region’s top creative firms and Sommer prides herself on the very best of creative quality, excellent client care, and creating a thriving culture for her team-all of which work from home remotely!

Like many other young people, she never thought she’d end up back in Wyoming. She’s here to stay and can’t wait to share with everyone WHY!

Sommer is all sorts of passionate about leadership, business, and the future of our youth as the next generation of up-and-coming workforce for Wyoming and beyond!

You can visit her firm’s website here.

Name:

Tanner Gentry

Title:

Wide Receiver-Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills - NFL

Tanner Gentry is cool because he is a proud cowboy who played football at the University of Wyoming for 4 seasons, and then went on to play 5 seasons in the NFL with the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills. He can’t wait to talk to you about setting goals, committing everything you have to those goals, the challenges that come with trying to achieve success, and the importance of surrounding yourself with others who support you in every way.